Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) threw a filibuster javelin into the heart of a bill to create an independent, bipartisan January 6 Commission. It is a shame that the Senate Republicans prefer the quasi-fascist party of Donald Trump, as the international analysis of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden named it. Maybe, McConnell would enjoy the do-nothing creation of an authoritarian country. But he has a shark in a velvet glove lurking nearby.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stands ready to implement a select committee of her own creation that will get to the truth of Trump’s attack on the American government. She and all the other politicians took an oath to protect our country against all enemies “foreign and domestic,” the U.S. Constitution demands.
The bipartisan outside panel would have been composed of 10 commissioners equally divided between the two parties. Oh, well. A top House Democrat told CNN last week after the failure that the Speaker would move to create a select committee instead:
‘That’s her next move.’
A manager of Donald Trump’s second impeachment, Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) indicated that the Senate should have had an outside commission bill. Alternatively, he suggested:
‘However, in the event that it fails, the Congress should create a select committee to fully investigate the causes and consequences of the insurrection on January 6.’
House Minority Leader Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) dreams of being the Speaker of the House motivates his weakness regarding his outlier representatives such as Josh Hawley (R-MO), Matthew Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. What he does not realize is that Greene has the same dream. He ridiculed last week’s failed bill as “The Pelosi select committee:”
‘I don’t think a select committee is the proper way to go.’
In Speaker Pelosi’s statement, which she released Friday after the Senate easily filibustered the bill, she wrote:
‘Honoring our responsibility to the Congress in which we serve and the Country which we love, Democrats will proceed to find the truth.’
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy (R) talked to Gladys Sicknick, mother of fallen Congress police officer Brian Sicknick on Thursday. Then, he stood against the Trumpers and voted to move the bill forward for debate, along with the five other patriotic Senate Republicans. He commented:
‘Without this commission, there will still be an investigation. But it will be a House-select committee set up by Speaker Pelosi — the nature of which will be dictated by Democrats and would stretch on for years.’
But Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made clear that he thinks the House should move ahead:
‘We preferred to do it bipartisan. Every Democrat voted for bipartisan, but facts must come out,” he said when asked whether the findings from a Democrat-led committee would be credible.’
Pelosi’s committee would lack the January 6 attempted coup committee’s outside, nonpolitical status. But it would give Democrats subpoena power and the schedule of the hearings. The self-described Grim Reaper McConnell wanted to kill the bill he feared would extend into the 2022 midterm elections. Instead, he ceded power to Pelosi and may have overplayed his plan.
